WAGING PEACE

STAFF PHOTO D. HANLEY Visitors enjoy music and art at the Museum of the Palestinian People’s exhibition opening and Nakba commemoration.

tents on the sidewalk to protect food, guests and musical equipment. Composer and oud artist Fuad Foty, aka “DC’s Voice of Palestine,” and his 14-year-old daughter Yasmine, played Palestinian music. Foty noted that tents are a poignant symbol of what refugees have to go through, but this year it also symbolized a funeral tent for the murdered journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Guests shared a moment of silence to remember the latest of too many Palestinian martyrs.

Bshara Nassar, founder and director of the museum, introduced his father Daher, a farmer who is a symbol of non-violent resistance in the West Bank. Nassar said it was fitting to honor Nakba Day by having Palestinian children tell their own stories at the museum.

Chairman of the board, Farshid Hakimyar, urged the crowd to donate to the museum. Board member Ruba Marshood said she wished the museum had existed when she was a child, to help her answer questions like, Why is your country not on a map? “My country was erased from the map but now I can bring my children to the museum so they can get to know my country and my heart,” Marshood said. Another board member, Mohammed El-Khatib, said volunteering at the museum is the most rewarding thing he’s ever done. “We have a space to anchor us,” he said. —Delinda C. Hanley

The U.S. Role in the Moroccan Occupation of Western Sahara

On April 13, experts addressed the issue of Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara in a webinar co-hosted by the Campaign to End the Occupation of the Western Sahara, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and the Pan African Unity Dialogue. Bill Fletcher, co-coordinator of the Campaign, moderated the discussion.

In 1974, Spain decided to end its control over Western Sahara and allow the native Sahrawis to hold a referendum to determine their future. However, due to legal objections by Morocco and Mauritania, the referendum, slated for 1975, never occurred.

The U.S. also apparently played a role in preventing the Western Saharans from choosing between independence and Moroccan rule. Katlyn Thomas, former legal adviser to the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) and author of The Emperor’s Clothes: The Naked Truth About Western Sahara, said the entire conflict “might not have occurred had it not been for the meddling of the United States government in 1975.”

Based on records received from Freedom of Information Act requests, Thomas discovered that then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger “basically arm-twisted Spain to capitulate to Morocco and allow Morocco to take over the territory.” Thomas cited several examples from FOIA documents showing the extent to which the U.S. government “put its hand on the balance of this situation in Morocco’s favor.”

While Thomas and her colleagues responsible for legal affairs in MINURSO were working on a referendum of self-determination for the Sahrawis, “the U.S. government behind our backs was doing everything to undermine us,” she explained.

Christopher Ross, former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Syria, was the U.N. secretary-general’s personal envoy for Western Sahara from 2009 to 2017. While his mandate was to facilitate direct negotiations between the parties and ensure the self-determination of the Western Saharan people, “the Moroccans kept insisting that I was there only to become an advocate for their position,” he said.

The former diplomat said the U.N. lacks the authority to change the status quo in Western Sahara. Steffan de Mistura, the U.N. secretary-general’s current personal envoy for the region, needs a broader mandate, he emphasized, “or we’re just going to keep spinning our wheels…and the ones who are really paying for this are the 173,600 Western Sahara refugees in the [Algerian] camps.”

The Biden administration has demonstrated ambivalence on this issue, as it has refused to rescind President Donald Trump’s 2020 acknowledgment of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. This acquiescence to the prior administration’s disregard for the international consensus is probably because the Biden White House “feels that facts on the ground in Western Sahara and the passage of time will both favor the Moroccans, so basically they don’t need to do much,” Ross said. Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco and co-author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution, pointed out the Biden administration’s hypocrisy in condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine, while not condemning—and even recognizing—Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara. “What

Supporters of Western Saharan independence demonstrate in front of Spain’s Congress of Deputies in Madrid on March 30, 2022. Days earlier, the Spanish government endorsed a plan for Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

the Biden administration is doing in effect is recognizing the forcible takeover of one recognized sovereign African state by another,” he stated.

This action sets a dangerous precedent and “gives us little credibility to speak out against Russia’s flagrant violations of international legal norms,” Zunes added. If the United States “really believed in international laws…we would oppose Morocco’s invasion and occupation as well.”

Zunes stressed the importance of mobilizing global civil society on the Western Sahara issue in order to pressure the U.S. government. “People do care about these kind of things, so the more people know about it, I think the more people will be goaded into action and it will be harder and harder for the U.S. government to defend” its policy, he said. —Elaine Pasquini Palestinian Citizen of Israel Reflects On Being a Member of the Knesset

Sami Abu Shehadeh is one of only 10 Palestinians in the 120-member Israeli Knesset (parliament). He recently came on a tour of the U.S. to share what it is like to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a perspective that is rarely shared. He also came to touch base with Palestinians living in the U.S., intentionally speaking in locations where there are large numbers of Palestinian Americans, such as New York, Boston, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he spoke in Oakland on March 24. Shehadeh initiated his remarks by providing a little history, beginning with the mass expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians when the State of Israel was created in 1948. He pointed out that, at that time, only about 5 percent of the population was Jewish, nearly all of whom were not Zionists. Palestinians who refused to leave became Israeli citizens, but they were and continue to be treated as enemies, he said.

Today, Palestinian citizens of Israel—20 percent of the population—are a minority in their homeland. The discrimination they encounter on a daily basis is profound and Shehadeh shared a few examples, including the following: • Separate educational systems for Palestinian and Jewish Israeli children; • Palestinian children being forced to learn modern Zionist history and denied the right to learn about Palestinian history; • A lack of essential infrastructure in some predominantly Palestinian neighborhoods (for example, the lack of a basic water supply and electricity).

“I have to listen every day to racist people saying that the fact that I brought children into the world is a demographic [time] bomb for the state,” Shehadeh said. “My [Jewish] neighbor, his children are considered a blessing for the state. And these are the words that they use.”

In the Knesset, the vast majority of his colleagues refuse to acknowledge that Shehadeh is Palestinian, routinely call him a terrorist and habitually interrupt and ignore him. “It’s a very hostile environment,” he said. Shehadeh shared that he has also been attacked physically by security forces

STAFF PHOTO DALE SPRUSANSKY

when he attends demonstrations.

Shehadeh ended his talk by clearly stating the Palestinian position. “We say Israel must change and acknowledge the rights of everyone,” he explained. “We want equality. We think that the colonial project should end. We believe in justice and equality for all. A Jewish state cannot be a democracy. It’s an oxymoron. No equality, no democracy.”

Rev. Michael Yoshii, who was instrumental in organizing Shehadeh’s talk in Oakland, agreed. “Equal rights for all implies that you can’t have a Jewish state and call it a democracy,” he told the Washington Report. —Katharine Davies Samway Confronting Superficial Reactions To Reports of Israeli Apartheid

With an increasing number of human rights organizations labeling Israel as an apartheid regime, pro-Israel voices are working overtime to discredit this damning charge. On March 30, the Foundation for Middle East Peace held a virtual event to discuss how the growing recognition of Israeli apartheid is altering the public discourse surrounding the country.

Peter Beinart, editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, noted that most of the people dismissing reports from groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International offer only superficial rebukes. A lot of critics “are not actually interested in understanding the realities on the ground and the international legal frameworks,” he said. “What they’re interested in doing is giving people a way of not having to engage with those very, very painful and difficult realities.”

Knee-jerk dismissals of the apartheid reports are often based on accusations of anti-Semitism and bias, Beinart pointed out. Wielding these rhetorical crutches, critics seek to rouse fear and deflect from the indepth analysis and data contained in the reports. “It turns the entire conversation away from the substantive claims that are made and the lived reality of Palestinians on the ground to the question of Jewish fears about anti-Semitism,” he noted.

If those denying the existence of apartheid in Israel were actually worried about hatred and anti-Semitism, Beinart said they wouldn’t silence an honest discussion about human rights. “The right way to deal with [concerns about anti-Semitism] is not to essentially say, ‘because we have fears of anti-Semitism, we’re going to try to shut down a conversation about the bigotry that Palestinians face on a daily basis,’” he opined. “There’s something actually deeply perverse about that move….The best way to fight anti-Semitism is through a struggle against all forms of bigotry, which has to include anti-Palestinian bigotry.”

Maha Nassar, a professor at the University of Arizona, said last summer’s “unity intifada”—which saw Palestinians in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora all rise up against ethnic cleansing and settler violence in Jerusalem—helped bust the myth that Israel is a liberal democracy. While the violence experienced by Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza was par for the course, the harsh repression of Palestinians within Israel revealed their status as second-class citizens.

Nassar noted, “It was those very Palestinians inside the Green Line, those who have been told their whole lives, ‘you are part of a liberal democracy’…those youth have come to the realization, ‘no we aren’t, we also suffer under Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid rule, just in different manifestations of it.’”

The reality of apartheid must inform and transform the approaches that outside actors take to build peace, Nassar insisted. In particular, she criticized the popular people-to-people peace-building framework, which stresses that the key to peace is getting Israelis and Palestinians to know one another.

“This approach completely ignores the structures of power and domination inherent in any Israeli-Palestinian encounter,” Nassar observed. “The conflict resolution framework posits the assumption that there are two equal sides—they both need to get to know one another, compromise a bit more, and if they just push a little harder, we can have peace.”

Rather than embracing such “peacebuilding” models, Nassar said young Palestinians are focused on naming and challenging structures of Israeli oppression, even if doing so draws strong rebukes from agents of the status quo, such as governments and lobbying groups in the West. —Dale Sprusansky

A protester in London holds a sign charging Israel with the crime of apartheid, on May 22, 2021.

Is Israel Practicing Apartheid in the Golan Heights?

Palestine Deep Dive’s April 6 webinar, “The Golan Heights: Occupation and Annexation Under the Spotlight,” addressed key questions concerning the often overlooked Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights. Moderator Mark Seddon, a former

Al Jazeera correspondent, interviewed Aram Abu Saleh, a Syrian writer and activist born in the Golan Heights.

Saleh began by reminding the audience of the largely forgotten Syrian right of return to the Golan Heights, which was seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed in 1981. “You hear no one talking about their right of return, their destroyed villages or what happened in ’67,” she noted.

Saleh described the seizure of the Golan as Israel’s most comprehensive act of ethnic cleansing, “even bigger than the Palestinian Nakba,” with 130,000 Syrians living in the territory before 1967, but only 13,000 remaining thereafter. (More total Palestinians—an estimated 750,000— were forcibly displaced by the Nakba in 1948, but a higher percentage of Syrians living in the Golan were expelled by Israel in 1967.)

Demonstrating the tragic effect of Israel’s ethnic cleansing on the everyday lives of locals, Saleh described the tradition of heading to Quneitra, home of the “shouting hill,” to communicate with forcibly separated loved ones. “It’s basically two hills, one on the Syrian side and one on our side. Our families would come at important ceremonies in the year, on Mother’s Day, on the Day of Syrian Independence, on Eid…we would just use shouting as communication.”

Saleh, who is currently studying in Berlin, also shined a light on the violence and trauma caused by landmines, which litter the territory. “We have a lot of people losing their hands or their legs due to accidents with these mines that Israel still refuses to remove,” she said.

Responding to a question about the duplicity of the international community, Saleh noted that the active sanctions campaign against Russia stands in sharp contrast to the global silence over the Golan. “They actually have sanctions on Syria, which are starving the Syrian people,” she said. “Our country is being sanctioned while the country occupying us is just freely doing whatever it wants.”

While Israel has been able to get away with imposing decades of hardship on the Golan’s native residents, Saleh said a determined resistance remains. “When Israel annexed the Golan, it tried to also force Israeli citizenship on the Syrians remaining there,” she noted. “There was a huge strike which went on for six months in our communities, and the Israeli army actually sieged five villages for six months and blocked food and milk for the children. At the end, they gave up and we still refused to take Israeli citizenship, so we have no right of voting or of participating as an Israeli. On paper we are defined as stateless…because by Israeli law, they also forbid us to be active Syrian citizens.”

Asked whether she believes that Israeli practices in the Golan amount to the crime of apartheid, she responded, “Of course, yes, I would say that. It’s obvious in so many aspects and details of life, in extremely basic things like electricity and water. It’s our own water, and also this is the reason that Israel wants to keep the Golan, not only because of its strategic placement, but because it’s basically their whole supply of water, their biggest supply of water. They take our water and they sell it to us for four times more. The settler buys it four times cheaper than we buy it. If that’s not apartheid, I don’t know what it is.”

Despite all the injustices, Saleh left viewers with an evocative image of what life in the Golan could be like with genuine security and liberation. “A dream—my first image is all the Syrians coming back to their villages and the Golan being full of people again, just like it was, because it had a lot of communities. We had Bedouins, we had Sunni, Shi’a. Basically, all of the Syrian mosaic was in the Golan, so my dream is for it to be alive again like that and not empty and full of settlements. That’s what it would look like.” —Omar Aziz

JALAA MAREY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Residents of the Golan Heights village of Majdal Shams wave Druze and Syrian flags as they protest the 1981 Israeli annexation of their land, on Feb. 14, 2022.

Demystifying and Rethinking Jerusalem’s Quarters

On March 16, the Balfour Project, the Bethlehem Cultural Festival and the Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem hosted a book launch via Zoom to celebrate the release of Matthew Teller’s new book, Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City. In a conversation with Mahmoud Muna of the Educational Bookshop, Teller spoke about his personal relationship with Jerusalem, his motivation for writing the book and shared a few stories about Jerusalem that he uncovered during his research.

Teller, a non-practicing Jew from London, first visited Jerusalem when he was 11 years old and has returned repeatedly throughout his life. As a British citizen, a White man and a Jew, he noted that he enjoys the privilege of being able to freely travel to Jerusalem and engage its many communities.

Over the course of his travels, Teller came to understand that tourism and politics often overshadow the secular and religious life of the diverse city’s inhabitants. Teller thus wanted to write a book that highlights the idea that “the people matter even more than the stones….We should not be overlooking, and particularly not suppress-

LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT/GETTY IMAGES A boy looks at a map in Jerusalem’s Old City, on May 10, 2021. A new book questions the validity of how Western maps typically depict the Old City.

ing, the people who live and work” in Jerusalem, he said.

During his extensive travels to Jerusalem, Teller realized that the common practice of dividing the city into four quarters (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian) is an arbitrary and mythological representation of the city. Not only are there no lines or divisions cordoning off different neighborhoods within the city, the lines shown on maps do not even represent concentrations of cultural, ethnic or religious life. As an example, Muna noted that many churches and mosques are located outside of the quarter affiliated with their religion.

Teller explained the history of Jerusalem’s division into quarters. According to medieval Arab sources, there were once anywhere from 18 to 39 distinctly recognized communities in the city. Teller noted that the first maps to label distinct ethnic or religious areas of the city were drawn by Europeans in the 19th century, when groups of Protestant evangelists came trying to convert the population. According to his research, the divisions as we know them today first appeared on a map drawn by the British evangelist George Williams in 1849 and have been acknowledged on Western maps since.

In addition to religion, Teller noted that splitting the city into quarters suited the British colonial mentality, as it provided a useful way to easily define and divide the native inhabitants.

Teller shared a few stories he collected in the book about communities in Jerusalem that are often overlooked by the outside world. For instance, he discussed the small enduring Indian presence centered around the shrine of an influential Punjabi Sufi known as Baba Farid, who reportedly had a mystical experience while traveling to Jerusalem 800 years ago.

Teller also highlighted the Karaite Jews, who are not recognized by most mainstream Jews but run the oldest continuously used synagogue in the city. One community that no longer exists in Jerusalem is the Moroccan Mughrabi Quarter, which was bulldozed overnight in 1967 to make room for the plaza in front of the Western Wall. The Mughrabi Quarter was established in the 12th century. Despite the title of his book, Teller made it clear that his writing does not cover all of the different communities represented in Jerusalem. Rather, his overarching goal is simply to highlight the often-overlooked communities of the city and to let them speak about their city for themselves.

Nine Quarters of Jerusalem is available from Middle East Books and More. —Elisabeth Johnson On May 15, nearly 2,000 Palestinian supporters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in 1948 to enable the creation of the State of Israel.

At the rally, which occurred four days after the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper, many in the crowd carried posters displaying the image of the 51-year-old veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera.

Sporting keffiyeh scarfs, waving Palestinian flags and carrying signs reading “Stop the Occupation” and “Justice for Shireen,” protesters and several speakers from the Palestinian Youth Movement denounced the continuing occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land by the Israeli government. Palestinians at the rally also demanded their right to return to their ancestral homeland, a right Israel has continuously denied them since 1948. STAFF PHOTO E. PASQUINI

The Palestinian community held a rally on the National Mall on May 15, 2022 to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the Nakba.

Even though Abu Akleh was “killed by bullets paid for by American taxpayers, there is no outrage whatsoever from this country,” Rev. Graylan Hagler told the crowd. “As we talk about the resistance in Ukraine, let’s talk about war crimes in Israel…and apartheid.”

The rally was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, American Muslims for Palestine, the U. S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.—Elaine Pasquini Can the U.S. and Iran Finalize a New Nuclear Deal?

The National Iranian American Council held a virtual event on May 10 to assess the obstacles to the U.S. and Iran finalizing a renewed nuclear deal. Negotiations to rejuvenate the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), abdicated by the Trump administration, have been ongoing for more than a year.

A new deal is all but agreed upon, but Iran’s instance that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) be removed from the U.S.’ list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) is stalling talks.

Tyler Cullis, an attorney specializing in U.S. economic sanctions at Ferrari & Associates, said Iran always believed the IRGC would be removed from the terror list as part of any nuclear deal and is surprised the U.S. is dragging its feet on the matter. As such, Tehran is leery about dropping its request or offering Washington a concession in return. “It’s really hard for Iran to give something up that it thought it was getting,” Cullis commented.

The IRGC is the only military of a foreign country designated as a FTO by the U.S., as the list is typically reserved for non-state actors. The Trump administration made the unprecedented move of adding the group to the terrorist list in 2019 as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the Biden administration’s reluctance to rescind the designation is largely “a matter of politics, not policy.” The White House seems to be hoping for a way to reconstitute the nuclear deal without incurring political damage, she noted, even as it faces pushback on the proposed deal from Republicans and even a fair number of hawkish Democrats.

“It does seem that President Biden wants to have a zero blowback policy on Iran,” Geranmayeh said, adding that she views such an aspiration as unrealistic. An Iran deal “is going to receive major political blowback for any U.S. president,” she opined.

Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, warned that if the White House keeps dragging its feet on solidifying a new deal, it risks matters much graver than political displeasure, such as Iran solidifying its nuclear weapons capabilities or the breakout of a war. In the absence of a deal, there is the “real risk of an escalatory spiral of actions leading to a broader conflict,” she cautioned.

The president, Davenport said, can either bite the political bullet and remove the IRGC’s terror designation, or “he can pay a far higher price for being the president that allowed Iran to come to the brink of a nuclear weapon, or started a war to try and stop that [nuclear breakout].”

With Iran advancing its nuclear capabilities, Washington must realize a new deal “is the best opportunity we have to roll back Iran’s nuclear program, to reintroduce intrusive monitoring and verification and to ensure that Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon remain verifiably blocked,” Davenport added.

The FTO designation is not the only tool the U.S. has to hinder the IRGC, Davenport noted, as there are currently a plethora of other sanctions applicable to the group. “We have other tools to push back against the IRGC,” she said. “We don’t have another good option to address the nuclear crisis.”

While Tehran and Washington are both signaling reluctance to budge on the matter of the IRGC’s FTO status, Geranmayeh said diplomats from the European Union and Qatar are working to find a creative solution. She said possibilities include the U.S. partially lifting the IRGC’s terrorist status, or the U.N. Security Council passing a measure regarding the IRGC that is acceptable to both Tehran and Washington. —Dale Sprusansky

IRANIAN PRESIDENCY/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi speaks the National Nuclear Technology Day exhibition at the International Conference Center in Tehran, on April 9, 2022.

Peace Activists Target Lockheed Martin’s Palo Alto Facility

In a generic Palo Alto, CA industrial park sits Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center, where the military contractor does research and development for its space division. It is here where, according to the company’s website, they “create game-changing technologies.”

Nobody would argue with that assertion, as the company has many notable accomplishments, such as the development of “foundational technology that fired the first submarine-launched ballistic missile.” More recently, the company was instrumental in the development of the now con-

Why Political Parties Aren’t Gaining Traction in Arab World

STAFF PHOTO P. PASQUINI Activists read a petition imploring Lockheed Martin to transition away from producing military hardware.

troversial stealth F-35 joint strike fighter jet, as well as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an anti-ballistic missile defense system designed to shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

It is precisely because of these developments that activists and pacifists from Code Pink, Pacific Life Community, the San Jose Peace and Justice Center and the Raging Grannies marched to the Advanced Technology Center on April 15 to present a petition signed by 4,100 people urging the company to shift from weapons development and manufacturing to peaceful industries. The petition represents the desires of more than 100 worldwide organizations that have endorsed the #StopLockheedMartin campaign.

The group of 20 activists marched from a major intersection in the downtown area to the facility, where they were met by a security detail that barred them from entering the property. Before turning over the petition to a company security official who promised to pass it along, three members of the group read a general statement aloud next to the Lockheed Martin sign.

Lockheed Martin has long been known for bloating U.S. defense spending. For the F35 program alone, in 2007 the company selfreported overbilling the government to the tune of $265 million in an “accounting error.”

The company’s weapons are also notorious for being used in attacks that result in civilian deaths. In one of its more infamous and deadlier moments, one of the company’s 500-pound laser-guided Mk 82 bombs called the GBU-12 Paveway II was used by the Saudi Arabian military in August of 2018 to bomb a school bus in Yemen, killing dozens of children.

The demonstration concluded with the Raging Grannies singing a song about how the company’s drones are used by the U.S. Air Force and CIA in their ongoing campaigns around the globe:

“Now killing’s a breeze when you’re safe overseas and your victims are dots on a screen, with your mouse you take aim like a video game, and you can’t hear their terror-filled screams.

Drones, drones in the sky, with the purpose of killing they fly, and their bombs when they hit off the target a bit, many innocent people will die.” —Phil Pasquini

A decade after massive popular protests swept the Arab world, authoritarianism is still prevalent across the region and political parties have largely failed to create new spaces for civic action. This reality prompted the Wilson Center to host a webinar on May 4 to offer a broad assessment as to why the 2010-2011 Arab Spring and subsequent uprisings have not given birth to powerful political parties in the region.

Marina Ottaway, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that there is no dearth of political parties across the Arab world. In fact, the past decade has seen an abundance of parties emerge onto the scene in many countries, to the point where she believes “the problem is that there are too many parties.”

On the heels of the various uprisings, seemingly endless individuals created their own parties, making it impossible for the citizenry to coalesce behind a shared vision,

YASSINE GAIDI/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

Tunisians gather in the capital of Tunis on April 10, 2022 to protest against President Kais Saied’s decision to dissolve parliament. Many fear Tunisia is rapidly losing the democratic gains it accomplished over the past decade.